What Makes a Leadership Team? Someone Who Can Apply the Brakes

What Makes a Leadership Team? Someone Who Can Apply the Brakes Everyone has heard the advice to “build the leadership team, set strategy, and lead the workforce.” But what is a leadership team? Company founders are often asked, “Do you have a leadership team?” Many confidently answer, “Of course! I have cofounders, and we even eat together regularly!” “That is not a leadership team. At most, it is an operating team.” How should we define a leadership team? It is like a wrench: it pushes back against you. As Liu Chuanzhi put it, “The head of a company must understand that this leadership team is being built precisely to constrain them.” Verification note: the exact original source of this quoted sentence could not be located. Liu Chuanzhi has made similar remarks about a leadership team constraining the top leader. Whether anyone in the organization can apply the brakes is the central test. If everyone simply agrees and executes whatever you say, that is not a leadership team. Many companies suffer a catastrophic crash not because they are heading in the wrong direction or moving too slowly, but because nobody applies the brakes at a critical moment—or because the braking force cannot counter the strength of the engine. #效率為王 ---- Robin: “I generally recommend finding at least one cofounder: someone who can communicate and exchange ideas with you as an equal. Ultimately, someone must still make the final call and bear responsibility for it. But entrepreneurship is lonely. Having at least one person with whom to pursue a shared direction, grow, challenge ideas, and support one another along the way is important.”